Salt or cocaine? Use of field tests in crime cases criticized

Results, presented in hearings, called less accurate than lab studies

Three field drug tests by Ventura County sheriff's deputies showed the white powdery substance inside two salt shakers and a jar in a bedroom was cocaine — four ounces of it.

A police drug-sniffing dog also reacted to it, indicating that the substance found March 9 at a home in Moorpark was cocaine.

A man who lived there was arrested on suspicion of possessing cocaine for sale, a felony. His bail was set at $50,000, and he spent 13 days in jail.

But the district attorney dismissed the charge in Ventura County Superior Court on March 21 after the "cocaine" turned out to be what the suspect had insisted it was all along — salt.

Officials are reviewing the case to determine what happened, said Sheriff's Department spokesman Capt. Ross Bonfiglio.

He said the deputy could have misinterpreted the color indicating the presence of drugs. Bonfiglio said he could only speculate about why the dog reacted.

"I don't know why," he said. "Dogs are not 100 percent reliable."

Defense lawyers say the case illustrates a problem in court, where police testify at preliminary hearings against suspects using the results of these field tests rather than the crime laboratory analysis report.

Normally, weeks pass before the more accurate tests can be completed by the crime lab. In some instances, the lab's results are dramatically different, according to defense attorneys.

Michael Parigian, assistant manager at the crime laboratory, said the average time to get cases analyzed is two months because of the heavy backlog and lack of enough people to do the work.

Christopher Welch, an attorney with the county Public Defender's Office who represented the Moorpark man, said he persuaded the Sheriff's Department Forensic Sciences Laboratory to do a "rush job."

Welch said his client, who is on misdemeanor probation for drugs, insisted that the white powdery substance was salt he had purchased at a store.

"No one believed him until now," the attorney said.

Bonfiglio said no statistics were immediately available about the number of field tests conducted annually or the number later found to be inaccurate. Such incidents are rare, he said.

"It happens sometimes. It is not a common occurrence," he said.

Bonfiglio said the tests are "presumptive" and are tools used to help officers make arrests.

"There is no perfection here," he said, adding that it all comes down to "good faith" on the part of a police officer.

Attorney Jay Leiderman, president of the Ventura County Criminal Defense Bar Association, estimated that field-test errors occur from 1 to 10 percent of the time.

He said they result in people being wrongly jailed, and in the process they sometimes lose their jobs while waiting for laboratory reports that will free them.

"What percentage of error are we comfortable with? We have the ability to get it right. We should get it right," Leiderman said.

According to court and police documents, the 35-year-old Moorpark man was arrested after deputies were summoned to his parents' house on Dorothy Avenue. He was angry and punched the walls, breaking a picture frame.

He went to a hospital to be treated for minor cuts before deputies arrived at the house, the documents show. He was arrested at the hospital for outstanding warrants and on suspicion of the possession and sale of drugs.